This year, Mountain View voters are choosing four city council members and deciding the fate of several important ballot measures—some of which can change our city forever. Your vote in local elections is critical to shaping where we live. To help you, the Mountain View Coalition for Sustainable Planning is offering recommendations for your votes in Mountain View and Santa Clara County.

MOUNTAIN VIEW CITY COUNCIL

MVCSP evaluated candidates based on their responses to our direct questionnaire and their statements during public candidate forums. We rated each candidate according to how well their values align with our organization’s vision for our community (which you can read here).

MVCSP is proud to endorse Lucas Ramirez with enthusiasm. Lucas is a consistent and vocal advocate for affordable housing, citizen engagement and openness in local government, and significant improvements to public transportation infrastructure (as well as bike and pedestrian safety). He has been a dedicated volunteer in the public arena on the Human Relations Commission, and as a City Council observer for the League of Women Voters he’s been to more council meetings in the last four years than even some of the council members.

MVCSP also endorses Thida Cornes, John McAlister, and Kacey Carpenter. Thida Cornes’ focus on safe active transportation and accessibility to open space for all line up well with MVCSP’s values. John McAlister’s work on the Silicon Valley Clean Energy Authority and his votes for high-density housing in key corridors like El Camino and North Bayshore, with access to mass transit to match, make him a good choice.

A note on Kacey Carpenter: His stated platform and his answers to our questionnaire do align highly with MVCSP’s values. However, we feel he needs more experience in local community activism and civic engagement to ensure he can be effective as a council member.

LOCAL MEASURES

Santa Clara County Measure A: Yes
This $950m bond would fund a “housing first” approach to homelessness in our county, which is already proving to be very effective in many municipalities around the country, including in San Jose. The bond targets low-income veterans, seniors, people with disabilities, working families, and homeless individuals. The County will be able to use the bond funds to generate an additional $2 billion from tax credits and matching federal, state and private grants. The funds will be distributed county-wide on a competitive basis to cities, non-profits, and developers that are actually ready to build low-income housing. We need this bond now to deal with our extreme housing shortage and growing economic inequality.

Santa Clara County Measure B: Yes
This would create a 30-year half-cent sales tax for the Valley Transit Authority to fund major mass transit improvements, including platform-to-platform transfers between Caltrain and BART in San Jose and Santa Clara, Caltrain grade separation in Mountain View, Palo Alto, & Sunnyvale, and a transit-only corridor down the middle of Highway 85. It includes $250m in bike/ped infrastructure improvements—while this could definitely be higher, there will be time to lobby VTA to increase the amount and focus funds on transportation improvements that do more than just fix potholes and add expressway capacity. The text of the VTA board resolution is here: http://yesmeasureb.com/uploads/articles/VTA.pdf.

Mountain View Measure V: Yes
Mountain View Measure W: Yes
MVCSP is in favor of rent stabilization to assist MV residents facing displacement now and in the immediate future, before our efforts to encourage more housing bear fruit in the city. We support the charter amendment (V) to lock in stabilization protections for a full two years, and to protect these policies from future swings in City Council progressiveness. However, Measure W also provides renter protections we support, so we recommend voting for both measures in case Measure V does not pass.
If both pass, V supersedes W, since it changes the city’s charter.